This week, ACT Theatre will be she stage for the Young Playwrights Festival. The Young Playwrights Program started in 2002 to give opportunities for Jr. High to High School kids and encourages them to enhance their writing skills. Each year, professional playwrights and teachers from ACT come together for a 10 week program that teaches concepts for play-writing. The course ends with each participant writing his or her own play.

There have been a slew of great films this year, and tonight at the Central Cinema, you can celebrate them all with great food and, even greater, adult beverages – all while watching the 83rd annual Academy Awards! This years’ best pictures include Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, and Winter’s Bone (phew!). That’s right – there are now 10 nominees each year instead of 5, so it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ve seen them all. …

You’ve probably heard them on KEXP if you haven’t heard them elsewhere, as they’ve been playing in Seattle for years now. The Lonely Forest hail from our very own Anacortes, Washington, nestled in the San Juan Islands. They are currently signed to Death Cabber Chris Walla’s Trans Records, and it’s no surprise – their cleanly produced songs and reverberating piano riffs definitely suggest Death Cab for Cutie’s most recent couple of albums. In 2006, they won the battle of the bands at Seattle’s Experience Music Project’s Sound Off! contest, thrusting …

Hooray! Last week, the Sasquatch Music Festival, one of the two big Washington music festivals, finally announced their band lineup and launched a brand-spankin’ new website. The site is clean-cut and under control – perhaps to a fault. The festival, which takes place on Memorial Day weekend of every year (since 10 years ago, way back in 2001), looks a lot like a held-back version of its California counterpart, Coachella. While we’ve got some fantastic headlining standards like Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, Wilco, …

Classic, idiosyncratic 90′s band Cake is performing at the Moore tonight, Saturday the 12th, and it promises to be a pretty great show. Though it’s a seated affair, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to bouncing along with the music or dancing whatsoever, Cake should manage to keep the crowd awake with their rattlesnake-like donkeyjaw and their loudly-expressed, introspective lyrics. Cake is supporting their latest album, Showroom of Compassion, which managed to top the Billboard 200 in the week of the album’s release.

A low-key Thursday at Capitol Hill’s choice Cha Cha lounge proved to be the ideal spot to sit down with local up-and-comers Yuni in Taxco. Amidst the heavily saturated Lucha Libre motif, piñatas and Mexican beer bottle cap décor, the band merely a year old shed some light on their “Yuni”que name and not so signature sound.
After years of admiring each others’ work in various projects, the five consisting of brothers Ross (vocals, guitar) and Bryce (drums), Sean (vocals, guitar), Jim ”the Guru” (bass, slide guitar) and Isaiah (backing vocals, …

If you only have time to visit one art gallery on first Thursdays, make it the Seattle Art Museum. The SAM has two, sometimes two and a half floors of fascinating art, and this month is no exception. It’s Warhol and Cobain in July; it’s hard to describe Warhol’s work in print, as the man was just so eccentricly brilliant at times, when he wasn’t being ridiculous. Both of these sides are on display in his exhibit. In contrast, Cobain is much more of a love letter to the man’s life, with all of the art having a distinct feel towards the reverent, making the juxtapositions of the two exhibits very interesting, particularly considering Warhol’s views on fame…

I originally went to the Seattle Asian Art Museum because I had been told that there was a display of Japanese woodblock prints which is one of my personal favorite styles of art. While the SAAM isn’t usually a stop on most art walks, due to its location up on Capitol Hill (and consequently, away from the action), I would encourage you to visit. Although the woodblock exhibit ends on the 4th of July, there are plenty of other exhibits to see, particularly in the new acquisitions section. So let’s talk about some of them, shall we?

Yuni in Taxco is a fresh face to the Seattle music scene, born in late 2009. They’ve already made a name for themselves by playing at venues all over Seattle, like the Comet, Sunset Tavern, and last night at the High Dive. The band is currently recording for their upcoming full length album, but for now, have made their EP available FREE.
Check it out! Yuni.bandcamp.com
Can’t get enough? Check out their myspace, and look for their upcoming interview right here at Seattle Scenester!

May 20, 2010: A typical night in Old Ballard… folks walking and laughter echoing through the streets, people scouting hard-to-find parking, and wearing unique brands of stylish hats and scarves to keep themselves warm [Hey, as Frightened Rabbit tells us, "It takes more than just f-ing someone to keep ourselves warm!" - Ed.]. Something is different though – might it be the ever so calm Mat Brooke and the Grand Archives? Of course! We’ve been waiting for our friends to return to Ballard. This is the …